Right now I'm using compiz, set up as per netllama's compiz thread that is stickied here. Starting compiz without --indirect-rendering makes video and games perform a bit render, and they render more consistently on the face of the cube and stuff.

My understanding is that that configuration is called.. aiglx?

I'm also hearing that using xgl is faster, but I thought it was an unnecessary layer of indirection with the newer drivers now. Can someone explain it to me? The documentation on these things seems a bit lacking. Trying to google for it mostly just turns up various howto guides, which are short on explanations.

I'm looking into this because I might have noticed an odd problem tonight. I was running without --indirect-rendering, playing wow in cedega for several hours. After a while, compiz was weirding out a little bit. Opening new windows would have the contents just be giant black blocks, and anything trying to use xv would crash immediately. Quitting cedega made this behavior go back to normal.

Is that black box behavior maybe similar to what screws up Wow's d3d rendering in the 9xxx drivers? That still doesn't explain what kills xv, though.